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Gratitude for Being Together in This Country

These are my words from this past Tuesday's Thanksgiving service with the Nashua Area Interfaith Council. Thank you to Pilgrim Congregational Church for hosting us this year!

Let me start my reflection on gratitude for being together in this country with a story about Wolf Landsman, Clarence Stetson, and Eva Castillo. It’s possible I have told this story in an interfaith council setting before, and if so then I am telling it again!

Thanks to my sister Ellen, the family genealogist, I know that in 1893 just a few days after July 4^th, my great-grandfather Wolf Landsman came to the city court in Utica, New York, or as it is known in my family, the Garden of Eden. Grandpa Landsman as my dad calls him was 21, and he had been in this country for only three years. At the courthouse he declared his intent to become a citizen of the United States and renounced all allegiance to his previous sovereign, the czar of Russa. That could not have been a hard thing to do; to be a Jew in the czar’s empire was terrible, and over a few decades about forty percent sought refuge and new possibilities in the United States. The hard thing for Wolf Landsman to do would have been to do write his intentions on a form in English.

So the document Ellen found is completed in the beautiful handwriting of Clarence Stetson, a court clerk. Plus my great-grandfather’s X for a signature. What I know about Mr. Stetson is that he and his family were for at least 80 years and may still be part of the legal, governmental, and civic leadership of Utica. I want to picture him with a fancy hat, but I have no evidence he is related to those Stetsons.

Some Stetson in a recent generation was leader of an architectural design firm working in the city; travel through downtown Utica and its classic buildings will remind you a lot of our own Nashua.

My favorite part of the document is the one place where I am pretty sure there was no way to quite bridge the communication gap between Grandpa Landsman and Mr. Stetson. In the otherwise meticulous penmanship of Mr. Stetson there is the name of the Russian town where my great-grandfather was born. I think all Mr. Stetson could hear was something like Grvkimustck, so it looks like he fudged it. It looks like letters on the form, but I think it’s just a clever piece of art that looks like letters. I’d ask my sister the researcher to make out the city name, but I like my version of the story better.

Two years ago, 129 years later to the month from the date of this document, I talked about this part of my family’s origins in America at an immigration-related gathering of storytelling and affirmation here in Nashua. When I arrived, with my tightly crafted three-minute intro, I learned that everything during the evening would be interpreted into Spanish and from Spanish to English, in real time, so we should speak accordingly with pauses etc. Thank you to the amazing Eva Castillo.

The upshot of which is that the story of my traditional Jewish great-grandfather was told not just in English by a rabbi -- but in a New England, Unitarian Universalist Church, in Spanish.

That is why I am grateful to be together in this country.

In Hebrew the root-word for gratitude is unlike most words in that it has really only a single letter, rather than three. The letter is dalet ד, which makes the sound D as in Judaic and means a door. I have been thinking about why gratitude is a door, whether it’s about opening and going in or opening and going out. Perhaps this is about emerging from one’s own space into the vastness of America, the chaos that could drown out one’s presence and voice, and yet still being found and heard. Perhaps this is about going inside, to a place not only one’s own but a welcoming home that could be any of ours, and sitting around a table for conversation about ultimate issues among many voices, reaching for a highest common denominator, in a conversation made possible in a space like this that is just right.

As the great rabbi Forrest Gump said: I think maybe it’s both... happening at the same time.

Even, or especially, when we strain to make sense of the words between us, to find a handwriting to represent the histories we are passing back and forth. As we translate our thoughts into one another’s languages. Or even when we can’t quite bridge the communication gap, and all we can do together is write the simplest mark, to indicate that one tried to speak and one tried to hear and we got this far so far.

And that is why this, inside this door, this dalet, is America. This is America. We shall repeat that and repeat that, enact it and enact it, because it is true and it will be true. For that -- for you -- I am thankful.

Jewish -- Thanksgiving is Actually in Our Name

These are words I shared in 2022 at the Nashua Area Interfaith Council service right before Thanksgiving.

The first words a Jew is supposed to say upon waking are: Modah Ani or Modeh Ani, which mean “Thankful am I”. Even before we bring ourselves into focus, we are we are taught to center gratitude, and to make being thankful the frame for our existence in the day that is just starting.

That short morning wake-up prayer goes like this in full:

Thankful am I before You
Power alive and enduring
For returning my soul/my breath into me with love
Great is Your faith

Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt, also known as the Velveteen Rabbi, says this last line isn’t just acknowledging the Divine faithfulness to us through giving us life. Rather, it’s actually a separate statement about Divine faith in us. God bets on me for the day to come, that I will pay off that faith even though all I have done so far is become aware that I am here. So in the first seconds of the day a Jew is to say: Thank you, here I am, I see that I’m breathing, great is Your faith in me. And then it’s off into the day.

Though Jews talk a lot about the significance of our name Israel, which means wrestler-with-the-Divine, we don’t talk nearly as much about our more common name Jews --  Yehudim, people of Judah. Judah was the fourth son of Leah and Jacob. Leah was the unloved wife, and when the first three sons were born, Leah gave them each names out of her yearning for more love from her husband, and those names did not come true. When the fourth was born she said instead, “This time I thank the Divine.” From the word for “I thank”, odeh, came the name Yehudah or Judah. (Along the way in the rendering of yehudi from Hebrew to Greek to the Europeans languages, the d sound fell away and the y hardened a bit, hence the word “Jew”.)

This thankfulness is more grounded in experience than the first-thing-in-the-morning “Thankful am I.” Leah’s naming-gratitude is gratitude despite, in the face of. But I wouldn’t say it’s only grudging, or through gritted teeth. In Hebrew words are generally built out of roots with three consonants, and often you can hear all three sounds regardless of the form of the word as a noun or verb. But all the many forms of the word for gratitude in Hebrew share only one sound, D -- the middle letter called dalet, which means: a door.

Thankfulness is a door. More specifically, it’s the decision to open a door from this place you are sitting, a place of perhaps not enough love toward you or from you, or not enough peace or not enough justice – open it and then look toward next-door where there is more of those waiting for you, where there are partners and friends and allies. Or open it and look toward an outside expanse of possibility.

Thankfulness is acknowledging that sometimes that door feels closed, or we don’t have faith enough or energy enough to open it – but then we realize we can, and hopefully we do.

Instant gratitude first thing every day, and gratitude in-spite-of as in our very name -- these are two very different ways in which gratitude is meant to be our essence as Jews. May this Thanksgiving help us become more thankful people each and every day.

Yehudi: Jews Means Thankful When Gratitude Isn't Easy

This was the D'var Torah I gave on Saturday, November 28, the Shabbat of Thanksgiving weekend 2020.

We Jews have three major names in the Tanakh, in the Bible. When other people are around, we’re sometimes called Ivri or Hebrew -- the people from over-there, from the other side of the tracks, the parevenu. When we’re among ourselves, we’re known mostly as Yisrael -- the ones who struggle with God and with other people, according to the story where that name originates. And we’re also known as Yehudi or Jew -- the people of thanksgiving. Yehudi has the same root as todah, thank you.

I bet when you hear or use the words Jew or Jewish, gratitude is not top of mind. I never really thought about it myself until a few years ago.

You could say that these three biblical names of ours are three dimensions of our deep consciousness -- the other, the struggler, the one who is thankful. 

Really most of the traditional literature through our history uses the term Yisrael, the wrestler or struggler. First thing in the morning we say Baruch..She-asani Yisrael -- that’s how we bless God for making me a member of this group. Just like the real Hebrew word for Judaism is Torah, the Hebrew word for Jew for most of our history has been Yisrael.

But we have this other name, and it’s the one that’s become the most common -- Jew or Yehudi. The history behind the name has to do with the disappearance of the ten tribes, leaving basically some Levites and almost everyone else from the tribe of Judah and the territory of Judah. Yehudah, Yehudim. Judah-ites, Judeans, which in transliteration to Greek and Latin eventually becomes Jews.

Anyway, in our parasha, the name Yehudah comes from Leah Imeinu. When her fourth son was born, she said hapa’am odeh et Adonai -- this time, this moment, I am thanking Adonai -- and so she called his name Yehudah, from odeh, I am thanking.

This time, says Leah, this moment I am thanking Adonai. Leah’s life as a whole was not full of the kinds of things that make easily for gratitude. She was the unwanted wife of Yaakov. Her situation did not change the way she hoped it might when she had children for Yaakov. She called her first son Reuven, saying God has seen my suffering. She called the second Shimon, God has heard that I am not loved. She called the third Levi, saying maybe now my husband will become close to me.

She called the fourth one Yehudah, saying: right now I am giving thanks for Adonai. Hapa’am odeh et Adonai.

Leah’s gratitude is not a contentment of having things good all in all and taking time to notice it. Leah’s thanksgiving is not a blessing she says at a turning point in her life from bad to good. Things don’t turn around for her particularly after Yehudah is born. For the time being, she is ignored, if things aren’t actually worse. At a moment when it’s not easy or about to be easier, Leah says todah, and she gives all of us our name.

This year it’s not as easy to feel gratitude on a Thanksgiving weekend, and there are many in our community here today for whom the holiday weekend makes harder a year of loss. Some of that loss seems like it should never have happened to begin with -- loss of loved ones, loss of income, loss of connections. So maybe this year we might particularly tune into how it is that Leah could say this moment I am thankful, hapa’am odeah.

Actually every year on this weekend I find myself grappling a bit with how to teach about gratitude, because of a worry that preaching gratitude might sound like saying the world as we have it is enough. So I went looking for a teaching that would speak to this concern, and found a teaching from Rabbi Alex Weissman, from Attleboro, Massachusetts and T’ruah, the rabbinic human rights organization. 

Rabbi Weissman says we need a perspective of gratitude especially at the moments we are looking at imperfection. He says that when we talk about tikkun olam, we run a risk of overfocusing on brokenness. We might easily fall into a spiral where we need negativity to generate the motivation to act, and where our own personal blessings make us feel guilty rather than thankful. 

Though he doesn’t use this language, Rabbi Weissman says it’s not sustainable only to think of ourselves as Yisrael, as the ones who struggle -- we need to be Jews, Yehudim, people of gratitude.

Rabbi Weissman brings out this insight through a debate in the Talmud about the word Halleluyah. In the book of Psalms, the first time we see the word Halleluyah is at the end of Psalm 104. “Sinners will be ended from the earth and evildoers nevermore exist -- o my soul, bless Adonai, Halleluyah.” Yitamu chata’im min ha’aretz ur’sha’im od einam, barchi nafshi et Adonai, Halleluyah.

The Talmud concludes from this that King David, composer of the psalms, could not bring himself to say Halleluyah until he could see the downfall of the wicked. But the Talmud brings another view in the name of Beruriah, the wife of Rabbi Meir and a great scholar in her own name. Rabbi Meir was being harassed by local hooligans, and he prayed for their death. Beruriah said to him: I bet you think you are relying on this verse -- “let sinners be ended from the earth” -- but you read it wrong. Yitamu chatai’m means not that sinners will disappear but that sin will  disappear. You should pray for them to do teshuvah, then say Halleluyah!

Rabbi Weissman says that Beruriah’s Halleluyah is what gratitude really is. It’s not just thankfulness for what we have today, and it’s not even the ability to imagine the disappearance of today’s negative. It’s a vision, he says, handed down from our ancestors. Their experiences of liberation and healing, and their prophetic visions, are more than the absence of what’s broken and missing. They are a beautiful picture of the world after pain and loss. They are a song of Halleluyah.

When we can’t say thank you from our own personal experience, Beruriah says: sing Halleluyah on behalf of our ancestors, or on behalf of the future, or on behalf of someone you care about who is safe, who is well. And when you can say thank you out of our own deep contentment, remember to make yourself a person who can be a reason someone else has to give thanks. That’s Halleluyah -- not cold and broken, but truly joyful.

In the winter of 2017 our local interfaith council had a meeting to talk about immigration issues as the Trump Administration was initiating its all-out assault on people here without documentation. One of our presenters was Maggie Fogarty, who was and is one of our state’s leading faith leaders and activists on these issues. I asked her in front of the group how spiritually she was facing all of this, and she surprised me with a version of Beruriah’s Halleluyah. 

Maggie answered me without hesitation, and in the peaceful way that I’ve come to see as her hallmark in the middle of struggle. She said there is joy in the fellowship of people showing up to stand by others, and in the music of voices singing together on days of success and even on days of defeat. She said she was choosing to be curious about the people on the other side who were absolutely in favor of the harassment and deportations Maggie was and is organizing against, rather than feeling overpowered by them. She said she was certain that all of this would be worthwhile, for all of the four years to come. It was quite a Halleluyah, and it sustains me and I think a lot of others. Whenever I am grateful for Maggie, I think about what it would take for me to be someone who others would have good reason to be grateful for too.

The very first song of Thanksgiving, according to the midrash, was composed by Adam and Eve. Mizmor Shir l’Yom HaShabbat: Tov l’hodot l’Adonai -- the song of Shabbat:  It is good to thank Adonai. The midrash says they composed this song on the first and only Shabbat in the Garden of Eden, when they knew they’d be packing their bags after Havdalah. 

Even with all that, they gave thanks for a day in the garden, for knowing that a garden of Eden is possible; for a day of Shabbat; for each other and the hard lesson from the divine; for knowing there was light the morning after. At that moment, they sang thank you, and hoped we would sing their song and remember that their paradise is real any day we don’t have it yet.

Eve passed her song to Leah, who named Yehudah and named us, and Leah’s thankfulness in a hard time became Beruriah’s Halleluyah. These are all variations on a theme, of finding thanksgiving even as we await a better time and strive for a better world. We need such thanksgiving, just as we need Shabbat as a weekly thanksgiving that powers us into a new week. We are not only Yisrael, the strivers, but Yehudim, Jews, the ever-thankful people.

Torah Reflection on Truth and Peace as of Right after Thanksgiving

I just wanted to get on record some reflections on what it's like as a rabbi and leader right now, a snapshot in time.

I have spoken previously about the prophetic verse Ha-emet v'ha-shalom ehavu -- "Love truth and peace." In the Talmud, the verse is quoted in the course of an exploration of a debate between the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai. They had some major, nontheoretical and nontrivial disagreements about the laws of marriage. And yet they allowed their children to marry each other. After trying without success to imagine scenarios when the disagreements didn't matter, the Talmud says that both schools of thoughts were loving both truth and peace. Yet they remain in tension, or at least in some cases truth seems to take a backseat.

I have certainly been living this tension for the past month. I am spending time, deliberately, with people who voted both for President-Elect Trump and Secretary Clinton. (The Talmud says that the School of Hillel is followed because they mention their opponents' arguments and positions before their own. That's why I am making it a habit to refer to the president-elect first.) I am trying, without straying from the truth about bigotries and sexism, to be a bridge of peace. It is not easy, but I am committed to it.

In the Torah this week, Rivka experiences twins fighting in her belly. She says, "If so, why is this that I am?" and goes to explore the issue with God. God tells her, "two peoples are in your belly, and two nations from your innards will separate." I read Rivka's question to be -- what is the meaning of "I", the unity of myself, my integrity, in a situation where two opposing forces are jousting, and they are both so connected to me that I feel the struggle in my body?

I have felt most days since Election Day this tension in my body. I seek not to lose my integrity, my I-ness, even as I listen carefully to the two or more perspectives that are vying with great energy.

I am grateful to the many congregants who have talked to me individually, in my office and on the phone and in coffee shops, and to the groups who have gathered with me too and let me structure some conversations. More to come. I will shortly post on a separate page a number of resources and ideas, to work against hate and division.

Giving Thanks

The Hebrew word for Jew is Yehudi, after our ancestor Yehudah (Judah).  The h-d part in Judah's name is the root of the word Todah, which means "gratitude" or "thank you."  When Judah was born, his mother Leah explained his name:  "This time I give thanks to Adonai."

In other words, a Jew is by definition a person of gratitude.  For traditional Jews, the first words uttered on waking in the morning are Modeh Ani, "Thankful am I."  Rabbi Shai Held teaches that in this prayer before we get to the word "I", the focus on self, we turn to God in gratitude for the fact that we are alive another day.

So even though Thanksgiving is not a Jewish holiday per se, thankfulness is a fundamental religious quality.  Some of us are thankful because now is a time of comfort, good health, family serenity.  Others are thankful for blessings that emerge or become apparent at difficult times:  support during illness, encouragement during unemployment, friendship amidst loss or feeling adrift.

And we know that many in our own community, in our families, in our world, have fewer blessings to count at Thanksgiving than they deserve.  We should ask ourselves not only, What I am thankful for?  But also:  What am I doing, so that through me someone else has what to be thankful for?

A couple years ago I recorded a podcast about the middah (ethical character-quality) of gratitude.  It's mostly about cultivating a habit of thankfulness through everyday, seemingly banal or neutral experiences -- gratitude as the opposite of complacency.  It's pretty good and placid, if you'd like to thank more about thankfulness from the standpoint of calm and comfort.  Lately I've been thinking a lot about what gratitude and hakarat hatov ("recognizing goodness") means when life is difficult.  The audio doesn't speak to that, and it's something I hope to have more to say about soon.

I hope that wherever you are in your life right now, you can have a day of gratitude tomorrow.

L'shalom,

Rabbi Jon

Thanksgiving

Every month in the Jewish calendar, I am focusing some teaching on a different middah.  A middah is a ethical character quality, a habit we can work on in ourselves.  (Click here for the podcasts, more study material to follow.)

I began teaching last Shabbat about the middah of gratitude.  And I'm finding that at least for myself, naming a trait for the month really does draw my attention.  So yesterday I found myself at a perfect example of something I mentioned in my Dvar Torah.

I mentioned that when our youngest daughter was just starting to talk, she would say "Thank you" when she gave me her empty plate after eating.  She had associated "thank you" with giving and receiving, but was a bit fuzzy on the details.  Shouldn't I be thanking her for helping to clear the table?

But in a way, I said, she had this insight:  It doesn't matter who says thank you.  When a good or helpful deed is being done, everyone can experience gratitude.  For being the recipient, for recognizing the power of good inside yourself, for being in an environment where people take notice of each other's good deeds.

That's what I said.  So yesterday I had the honor of being a guest at the local Rotary Club lunch meeting.  Donations were being given to tens of local organizations.  One by one, each recipient got up to say "thank you" to the group.  This was after a number of thank-you's and recognitions within the meeting for volunteer work that members had done recently for one another.

Two days before Thanksgiving, it was very powerful to hear maybe fifty people say "thank you" from the microphone, one every 45 seconds or so.  And I realized the truth of my teaching, that is doesn't matter who says the words.  The organizations were no doubt thankful for the financial support.  But it was clear that the assembled gathering of givers were deeply thankful for, and awed by, the work that these organizations do.  To hear every 45 seconds about yet another group of people who meet a community need -- to know that people like this are out there -- was even more powerful

Far from being repetitive, each successive thank you built a higher and higher wave of gratitude, lifting together those who were giving and those receiving.